By msmash from Slashdot's safety-and-concerns department:Several readers share a report: BMW said Friday it is recalling about 1 million vehicles in North America for two separate issues involving fire risks and said it may expand the recalls to other countries. One recall covers 670,000 2006-2011 U.S. 3-series vehicles to address a wiring issue for heating and air conditioning system may overheat and could increase the risk of a fire. The second recall covers 740,000 U.S. 2007-2011 vehicles with a valve that could rust and lead to a fire in rare cases. The recall includes some 128i vehicles, 3-series, 5-series and X3, X5 and Z4 vehicles.

By msmash from Slashdot's stranger-things department:Corbin Davenport, writing for AndroidPolice: Some Pixel 2 XL units are being shipped without Android properly installed. Obviously, the phone can't boot without the OS. It may be possible to flash a factory image, since fastboot is supposed to allow signed images to be flashed with the bootloader still locked, but the affected phones could have other problems that prevent this from working. The company confirmed the veracity of the story, but did not share more details. It said, however, that the issue had been resolved.

By msmash from Slashdot's changing-dynamics department:An anonymous reader writes: Over the last year, many companies have ended their liberal work-from-home policies. Firms like IBM, Honeywell, and Aetna joined a long list of others that have deemed it more profitable to force employees to commute to the city and work in a central office than give them the flexibility to work where they want. It wasn't supposed to be this way. In 1975, when personal computers were little more than glorified calculators for geeks and the Internet was an obscure project being developed by the United States government, Macrae, an influential journalist for The Economist who earned a reputation for clairvoyant prophesies -- including the fall of the Soviet Union and the rise of Japan -- made a radical prediction about how information technology would soon transform our lives. Macrae foretold the exact path and timeline that computers would take over the business world and then become a fixture of every American home. But he didn't stop there. The spread of this machine, he argued, would fundamentally change the economics of how most of us work. Once workers could communicate with their colleagues through instant messages and video chat, he reasoned, there would be little coherent purpose to trudge long distances to work side by side in centrally located office spaces.

By msmash from Slashdot's tussle-continues department:A reader shares an NPR report: With the push of a button, an employee at Twitter accomplished for a brief few minutes on Thursday what President Trump's closest advisors have reportedly been trying unsuccessfully to do for months: shut down the seemingly never-ending tweet stream at @realDonaldTrump. Perhaps it was an act of civil disobedience, or maybe just a "take this job and shove it" moment, but shortly before 7 p.m., the president's personal account kicked back the error message "does not exist." By 7:03 p.m., it was up and running again and within about a half-hour, new presidential tweets were forthcoming. The folks at Twitter leapt into action to find out what had happened: "Earlier today @realdonaldtrump's account was inadvertently deactivated due to human error by a Twitter employee. The account was down for 11 minutes, and has since been restored. We are continuing to investigate and are taking steps to prevent this from happening again," the company said in a statement. Two hours later, the company said, "Through our investigation we have learned that this was done by a Twitter customer support employee who did this on the employee's last day."

By BeauHD from Slashdot's don't-do-the-crime-if-you-can't-do-the-time department:An anonymous reader writes: The operator of a 77,000-strong spam botnet was sentenced to two years probation and no prison time after admitting his crime and completely reforming his life. The former botnet operator is now working for a cybersecurity company, and admitted his actions as soon as the FBI knocked on his door back in 2013. The botnet operator, a 29-year-old from Santa Clara, California, says he was tricked by fellow co-schemers who told him they were not doing anything wrong by infecting computers with malware because they were not accessing private information such as banking or financial records. Furthermore, the botnet operator escaped prison time because he used all the money he earned in getting a college degree at Cal Poly instead of using it on a lavish lifestyle or drugs. This case is similar to the one that MalwareTech (aka Marcus Hutchins) now faces in the U.S. for his role in developing the Kronos trojan, but also after turning his life around and working as a cybersecurity researcher for years.

By BeauHD from Slashdot's photo-bombed department:sciencehabit shares a report from Science Magazine: Five previously unknown asteroids in our solar system have photobombed new Hubble Space Telescope images. Astronomers spotted the space rocks -- plus another two that had been previously catalogued in images collected as part of the Frontier Fields project, which observed six clusters of galaxies billions of light-years away. When multiple exposures obtained at different times were stacked together to produce the image above, the asteroids showed up as trails because they had moved between exposures, and some of the asteroids were spotted more than once. The five new asteroids orbit within the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. Previous studies missed them because they're extremely faint

By BeauHD from Slashdot's no-time-like-the-present department:schwit1 shares a report from Breaking Defense: China's just announced an AI strategy designed to assure it will be dominant in the host of technologies by 2030. "If you believe this is important, as I believe, then we need to get our act together as a country," [Alphabet Exec Chairman Eric] Schmidt said this morning. In a Q and A session at the event organized by the Center for a New American Security, Schmidt said he thought the U.S. will maintain its lead over the People's Republic of China for the next five years, but he expects China to catch up about then and pass us "extremely quickly." How important does China think AI can be? Former Deputy Defense Secretary Bob Work told Breaking Defense the Chinese estimate they can boost economic growth with AI by 26 percent by 2030. "It's quite stunning," Work said. And, of course, the PRC's government has published a national strategy and released it to the world. What's the best response by the United States, I asked Work after Schmidt spoke. The federal government needs to answer this question at its highest levels, as happened after the Soviet Union stunned the world and launched the first satellite, Sputnik, Work said.

By BeauHD from Slashdot's comprehensive-studies department:An anonymous reader quotes a report from NPR: It is "extremely likely" that human activities are the "dominant cause" of global warming, according to the the most comprehensive study ever of climate science by U.S. government researchers. The climate report, obtained by NPR, notes that the past 115 years are "the warmest in the history of modern civilization." The global average temperature has increased by about 1.8 degree Fahrenheit over that period. Greenhouse gases from industry and agriculture are by far the biggest contributor to warming. The findings contradict statements by President Trump and many of his Cabinet members, who have openly questioned the role humans play in changing the climate. The report states that the global climate will continue to warm. How much, it says, "will depend primarily on the amount of greenhouse gases (especially carbon dioxide) emitted globally." Without major reductions in emissions, it says, the increase in annual average global temperature could reach 9 degrees Fahrenheit relative to pre-industrial times. Efforts to reduce emissions, it says, would slow the rate of warming.

By BeauHD from Slashdot's price-difference department:chicksdaddy writes from a report via Digital Guardian: If you want to understand the ground shaking change that the EU's General Data Protection Rule (GDPR) will have when it comes into force in May of 2018, look no further than hotel giant Hilton Domestic Operating Company, Inc., formerly known as Hilton Worldwide, Inc (a.k.a. "Hilton."). On Tuesday, the New York Attorney General Eric T. Schneiderman slapped a $700,000 fine on the hotel giant for two 2015 incidents in which the company was hacked, spilling credit card and other information for 350,000 customers. Schneiderman also punished Hilton for its response to the incident. The company first learned in February 2015 that its customer data had been exposed through a UK-based system belonging to the company, which was observed by a contractor communicating with "a suspicious computer outside Hilton's computer network." Still, it took Hilton until November 24, 2015 -- over nine months after the first intrusion was discovered -- to notify the public. That kind of lackluster response has become pretty typical among Fortune 500 companies (see also: Equifax). And why not? The $700,000 fine from the NY AG is a palatable $2 per lost record -- and a mere rounding error for Hilton, which reported revenues of $11.2 billion in 2015, the year of the breach. That means the $700,000 fine was just %.00006 of Hilton's annual revenue in the year of the breach. Schneiderman's fine was less "bringing down the hammer" than a butterfly kiss for Hilton's C-suite, board and shareholders. But things are going to be different for Hilton and other companies like it come May 2018 when provisions of the EU's General Data Protection Rule (or GDPR) go into effect, as Digital Guardian points out on their blog. Under that new law, data "controllers" like Hilton (in other words: organizations that collect data on customers or employees) can be fined up to 4% of annual turnover in the year preceding the incident for failing to meet the law's charge to protect that data. What does that mean practically for a company like Hilton? Well, the company's FY 2014 revenue (or "turnover") was $10.5 billion. Four percent of that is a cool $420 million dollars -- or $1,200, rather than $2, for every customer record lost. Needless to say, that's a number that will get the attention of the company's Board of Directors and shareholders.

By BeauHD from Slashdot's by-the-numbers department:Apple on Thursday reported sales and earnings well ahead of projections, and said holiday sales should be a record and ahead of many analysts' expectations. The company sold 46.6 million iPhones last quarter, which came in about 500,000 units ahead of expectations. Axios reports: Going into the earnings report, there were concerns about both iPhone 8 demand and iPhone X supply. Thursday's report should go a long way toward answering those questions. Sales were up in every region expect Japan, where business was down from the prior year, though up sequentially. Notably, the company finally saw a much-needed turnaround in Greater China, where sales of $9.8 billion were up 22% from the prior quarter and 12% from a year ago. The company's business has been weak in China for some time, though the company had predicted improvement this quarter. Apple reported $52.6 billion in revenue (vs $51.2 billion estimated) and per-share earnings of $2.02 (vs $1.87 estimated). In addition to the 46.6 million iPhones sold (vs 46.1 million estimated), the company sold 10.3 million iPads (vs about 10 million expected) and 5.4 million Macs (vs about 5 million expected).

By BeauHD from Slashdot's shocking-news department:A report from FierceCable says that a million more U.S. pay TV subscribers cut the TV cord last quarter. "Only five of the seven biggest pay TV providers have released their third quarter subscriber data, but collectively these companies saw a net loss of 632,000 pay TV subscribers during the period (385,000 for AT&T and DirecTV, 125,000 for Comcast, 104,000 for Charter, 18.000 for Verizon FiOS TV)," reports DSLReports. "Dish has yet to report its own cord cutting tallies, but the company is again expected to be among the hardest hit due to a high level of retransmission fee feuds and a lack of broadband bundles."

By BeauHD from Slashdot's retaliatory-actions department:An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: AT&T and the U.S. Department of Justice are discussing conditions the No. 2 wireless carrier needs to meet in order for its acquisition of Time Warner Inc to win government approval. The $85.4 billion deal, hatched last October, is opposed by some consumer groups and TV companies on the grounds that it would give the wireless company too much power over the media it would carry on its own network. Donald Trump, who has accused media companies like Time Warner's CNN of being unfair to him, criticized the deal on the campaign trail last year and vowed that as president his Justice Department would block it. The proposed deal represents an early challenge for the Justice Department's new antitrust chief, Makan Delrahim, a Trump appointee who was confirmed by Congress in late September. Delrahim may be looking to ramp up pressure on AT&T. The Wall Street Journal reported that the Justice Department was laying the groundwork for a potential lawsuit aimed at stopping the deal if settlement talks did not work out.

By BeauHD from Slashdot's behind-the-scenes department:Yesterday, the U.S. Navy issued its report on the collisions of the USS Fitzgerald and USS John S. McCain this summer, which was the fourth U.S. Navy collision this year. "The Navy's investigation found that both collisions were avoidable accidents," reports Ars Technica. "And in the case of the USS McCain, the accident was in part caused by an error made in switching which control console on the ship's bridge had steering control. While the report lays the blame on training, the user interface for the bridge's central navigation control systems certainly played a role." From the report: According to the report, at 5:19am local time, the commanding officer of the McCain, Commander Alfredo J. Sanchez, "noticed the Helmsman (the watchstander steering the ship) having difficulty maintaining course while also adjusting the throttles for speed control." Sanchez ordered the watch team to split the responsibilities for steering and speed control, shifting control of the throttle to another watchstander's station -- the lee helm, immediately to the right (starboard) of the Helmsman's position at the Ship's Control Console. While the Ship's Control Console has a wheel for manual steering, both steering and throttle can be controlled with trackballs, with the adjustments showing up on the screens for each station. However, instead of switching just throttle control to the Lee Helm station, the Helmsman accidentally switched all control to the Lee Helm station. When that happened, the ship's rudder automatically moved to its default position (amidships, or on center line of the ship). The helmsman had been steering slightly to the right to keep the ship on course in the currents of the Singapore Strait, but the adjustment meant the ship started drifting off course.

By BeauHD from Slashdot's fine-print department:On Tuesday, Google's cloud-based word processing software was randomly flagging files for supposedly "violating" Google's Terms of Service, resulting in some users not being able to access or share their files. Google today explained the issue and addressed concerns that arose. 9to5Google reports: Several users on Tuesday morning reported no longer being able to open certain files they were working on in Docs, while others were locked out mid-edit. "On Tuesday, October 31, we mistakenly blocked access to some of our users' files, including Google Docs," Google said in a blog post. "This was due to a short-lived bug that incorrectly flagged some files as violating our terms of service (TOS)." Afterwards, Google provided a comment to Gizmodo noting that a code push made earlier that morning was at fault and that full access had been restored to users hours after the bug first arose. Today's clarification goes on to explain how that error on Tuesday caused Drive to "misinterpret" responses from the antivirus system designed to protect against malware, phishing, and spam. As a result, Docs "erroneously mark[ed] some files as TOS violations, thus causing access denials for users of those files."

By BeauHD from Slashdot's point-A-to-point-B department:An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg: President Donald Trump said semiconductor company Broadcom Ltd. is returning its headquarters to the U.S. from Singapore. Broadcom Chief Executive Officer Hock Tan joined Trump Thursday in the Oval Office for the announcement. Tan said the move to domicile the company in the U.S. would bring $20 billion in revenue into the country. The two men didn't specify the site of the new main location. Broadcom's website lists San Jose, California, as an existing corporate co-headquarters and has done so since the present company was created in 2016 in one of the semiconductor industry's largest acquisitions when Avago Technologies Ltd. acquired then-Broadcom Corp. The company's shares declined as much as 4 percent to $248.87 after the announcement. The stock had gained 47 percent this year through Wednesday's close.

By msmash from Slashdot's no-gaming department:A reader shares a report: Celebrities, sports figures and social media stars have been warned by US regulators about endorsing crypto-currencies. Paris Hilton, boxer Floyd Mayweather and others have all publicly backed digital currency funding drives. The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) said the endorsements could break laws on selling securities. Those promoting crypto-currencies must say if they are being paid for the endorsement, it said. In its official warning, the SEC pointed to the growing numbers of public figures who have talked about the funding drives, known as Initial Coin Offerings (ICOs), that crypto-currencies run to raise cash. About 270 separate crypto-cash start-ups have sought funds via ICOs in 2017, said the New York Times. In total, the ICOs have raised more than $3bn, it said. The SEC said any virtual coins or tokens bought by investors through an ICO were subject to the same laws governing the sale of stocks and shares sold via mainstream stock markets.

By msmash from Slashdot's where-we-are department:A reader shares a Quartz report: Think back to the mobile phone you had in 2010. It could access the internet, but it wasn't such a great experience. On average, people only spent 20% of their time online on their phones back then, according to Zenith, a media agency. Today, by contrast, we spend around 70% of our time on the internet on phones, based on estimates and forecasts for more than 50 countries covering two-thirds of the world's population. By 2019, Zenith says this will rise to close to 80%. What used to be called "mobile internet" is now just the internet.

By msmash from Slashdot's whatever-floats-the-boat department:TV piracy services are being used by about 6.5 percent of North American households with broadband access, potentially costing legitimate TV providers billions of dollars a year, a new analysis found. From a report: Pirate services that offer live TV channels are apparently responsible for more downstream traffic each night than torrent downloads. Based on these figures, there may be 7 million US and Canadian subscribers to pirate TV services that generally cost about $10 a month, the report by Sandvine said. That amounts to $840 million of revenue a year. We don't know how many people using pirate services would purchase a traditional cable or satellite TV package if the piracy option didn't exist. But if all of those people instead purchased a legal TV package for $50 per month, that would amount to another $4.2 billion revenue a year for North American pay-TV providers, the report said.

By msmash from Slashdot's tussle-continues department:Qualcomm has sued Apple, again, this time alleging that it violated a software license contract to benefit rival chipmaker Intel for making broadband modems, the latest salvo in a longstanding dispute between the two companies. From a report: Qualcomm alleged in a lawsuit filed in the California state court in San Diego on Wednesday that Apple used its commercial leverage to demand unprecedented access to the chipmaker's highly confidential software, including source code. Apple began to use Intel's broadband modem chips in the iPhone 7, which it launched last year.

By msmash from Slashdot's moving-forward department:A reader shares a report: Spurred by concerns over climate change and the negative impacts of concrete manufacturing, architects and developers in France are increasingly turning to wood for their office towers and apartment complexes. Concrete was praised through much of the 20th century for its flexibility, functionality, and relative affordability. In France, the material ushered in an era of bold modernist architecture including housing by Auguste Perret and Le Corbusier. Today, however, wood is lauded for its smaller environmental footprint and the speed with which buildings can be assembled. "Wood had largely disappeared and was seen as a quaint material," says Steven Ware, a partner at the architecture firm Art & Build, whose latest wooden office building opened in Paris's 13th arrondissement earlier this summer. "[But] the energy it takes to put a concrete building up, to run it, and then dismantle it when it becomes obsolete was too much. Using mass timber in office buildings seemed like something we had to do." The production of cement, one of the main ingredients in concrete, generates an estimated 5 percent of the world's carbon emissions. Trees, in contrast, capture CO2, helping offset emissions produced by a typical building process. And then there's the string of other construction advantages that make wood economically appealing. It's lighter, which means digging smaller foundations in the ground. Crane costs come down, as they're no longer hauling blocks of cement hundreds of feet in the air. Driving a nail into a slab of wood requires a lot less energy than driving one into concrete. Months can be knocked off the construction timeline.